Alex Massie

I have it on good authority that, as matters stand, some senior figures within the SNP are concerned by the way the party has lost - or is perceived to have lost - momentum this summer. Of course, the road to the independence referendum is a long one and there's ample time for the nationalists to up their game. Nevertheless, right now, their message is not cutting through as effectively as they would hope. That's the subject for a column I've written for today's Scotsman: Even so, the SNP’s message has become oddly blurred. What is independence actually designed to achieve? For months now, the party has reassured voters that much of what they hold dear about Britain will remain unchanged post-independence.

In one sense, I have some sympathy for Lance Armstrong. He has been hounded by the American anti-doping agency USADA who, like other federal agencies, are remorseless foes. Once they have their hooks in you they never let go. The usefulness of their investigations is another matter. Even so, Armstrong's declaration that enough is enough and that he will no longer bother to defend himself against doping charges will doubtless be seen as a capitulation. Most people, I suspect, will take his silence as an admission of guilt. So it really wasn't just about the bike, was it? Apparently not.

In a recent piece Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor, pondered how the UK economy could be adding jobs while, according to the figures, shrinking by 0.7% during the second quarter of this year. As she put it, this is a conundrum that "Britain's finest economic brains simply cannot explain". Well, I can't explain it either. But, perhaps because I'm not any kind of economic brain, I wonder if all this measuring and collecting of information now does as much harm as good. In one sense, of course, it seems obviously good that government collect data so it knows what's going on. But that comes at a price: it encourages governments to tinker and interfere even more than they might already be predisposed to tinker and interfere.

And then there was one.  Of the four princes who made India the world's best side to watch in the first decade of the 21st century, only Sachin Tendulkar - the first and greatest of them - remains. Saurav Ganguly, the tiger of Bengal, was first to leave the arena. Rahul Dravid, the classicist, departed last year. Now Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman, the most artistic member of India's most formidable quartet, has announced his retirement from international cricket. As Cardus (who else?) wrote of Ranji, Laxman distributed his runs as largesse delivered in silk purses. If he could not claim Ranji's aristocratic lineage, he was still, even in his own time, something of a throwback to an earlier age.

Reader TT asks a good question: given your (self-appointed) role as the Spectator's unofficial darts correspondent, why haven't you written anything on the death of Sid Waddell? What can I say? Grief moves one in mysterious ways. Few people can claim to have created a sport, yet that was Waddell's achievement and only nit-pickers and other churls would mock the fact that the sport Waddell created was darts. Before Sid there was nothing and the darts universe is his creation. As he might almost have put it, "God took six days to create his world, Phil Taylor needed just three hours to build his. And Taylor never rests on the Sabbath." Though a Northumbrian by birth, Waddell was an example of the democratic intellect. Had he been Scottish he'd have been considered a "lad o'pairts".

The Olympics are over and, with grim inevitability, politics have returned. Not the least lovely aspect of the Olympic fortnight was the manner in which it eclipsed everything and anything our politicians had to say. They were not missed but now they're back. And so is Joan McAlpine MSP. As I've said before, McAlpine's column in the Daily Record rewards careful attention, not least because it is a nationalist beach-head in hostile territory. Moreover, it is a weekly demonstration of how at least one influential nationalist thinks the SNP can appeal to working-class voters, principally but not exclusively in west-central Scotland. It is rarely, I confess, a pretty sight but that may be because it's not written to persuade the likes of me. This week's offering is no exception.

How do you solve a problem like Kevin Pietersen? England's most talented and most infuriating batsman faces another crisis and, yet again, it is a crisis of his own making. Pietersen's dispute with the ECB (the cricket authorities, not the European Central Bank) shows every sign of ending his Test Match career. The man himself insists he just wants to play for England yet, puzzlingly, seems to find the business of actually doing so more tedious and complicated than the layman - that is, the supporter - can possibly hope to understand. Notionally it is a simple business. England would like to offer Pietersen the privilege of batting for England. What could be more handsome than that? This reckons without the complicating matter of the Pietersen Ego, however.

Back from holiday and it seems just about the only "controversy" at these splendid* Olympic Games lies in Danny Boyle's exhuberant opening ceremony. According to its critics it was multi-cultural crap or pap or something. And, of course, in one sense it was a hymn to multi-cultural Britain. Why else would Boyle have begun with choirs in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England (spliced with rugby footage) if not to remind the audience (in London and further afield) that the United Kingdom is not quite the same thing as England. Of course, that's not what the critics of multi-culturalism really mean when they sneer at "multi-culti" tripe and political correctness "gone mad". One of the problems with discussing these matters is the difficulty of defining and agreeing on terms.

Sorry folks, but you'll not have me to kick around these next two weeks. I'm away to the Isle of Jura this week for Midge Fest 2012 (and the 62nd edition of the Ardlussa Sports). Thence to Ireland for a week of cricket as a member of Peter Oborne's annual travelling circus. See you here next month.

Top marks to Paul Watson for this nipping satire, published in today's Guardian: 'In fact it is almost impossible to find any piece of positive European journalism relating to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The days of cold war pantomime journalism and great ideological battles might be over, but North Korea remains an area in which journalists have free licence for sensationalism and partiality. The lack of western sources in North Korea has allowed the media to conjure up fantastic stories that enthrall readers but aren't grounded in hard fact.

I wasn't especially impressed by Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP (nor, frankly, by the way Romney was booed, though that's a different matter) but at least I wasn't driven demented by it. The same, alas, cannot be said for poor Michael Tomasky who sees something rotten lurking in the dark heart of Romney's, er, standard stump speech: Oh please. This is guff. Guff on stilts, in fact. It's true that being booed by the NAACP won't hurt Romney with the wilder, nastier corners of the Republican base. Nevertheless, to presume Romney set this speech up so as to perform and benefit from this kind of trick shot is to grant the campaign a deeper level of cunning than it has shown any sign of owning.